Multifunction peripherals (MFPs), or digital complex machines (referred to as digital MFPs hereinafter), have recently come into widespread use, which have advanced multifunctionality including a scanner function for reading documents, a copying function for copying documents, a printing function, having a communication facility, for printing external image data, and a facsimile function.
Such digital MFPs require settings on great many functions on their operating screens, including settings on image quality, like monochrome, gray level (darkness or tint), color, and resolution of documents, settings on document pages, like enlargement/reduction ratio, margin, and portrait/landscape (printing direction), and settings on print finishing, like single-sided/double-sided printing, stapling, punching, and N-in-1 (integration function). The user has to open such various setting display screens one by one to determine which function is to be selected for use and to consider how to set the selected function. In other words, the user must repeat the operation of opening individual menu screens for settings, and after the settings, closing the menu, and then opening another menu. This takes great much time.
A recent method for displaying many functions on a small operating screen includes making good use of the operation screen using tabs. However, this method tends to increase the number of user operations, making it difficult to determine where necessary functions are present and what function is to be used, and thus provides low usability.
Therefore, when setting image processing information in the present circumstances, the user must find a desired function from many menu items while considering finished quality, and input correct settings on the respective setting menus. For finished screens, “a preview screen” is present, which, however, is used only for confirmation after various functions have been set on their respective setting menus.
If a desired finishing setting cannot be made, the user must repeat the operation of returning to a mistakenly set menu screen to reset it and reconfirming the setting on a preview screen or cancelling the mistakenly set menu again and again, thus resulting in a very inefficient setting operation.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-87166 describes a method of displaying an output-image quality icon (associated with a print-setting condition item pointed by a pointer) set in an icon display area on a print setting screen before an input value is determined. The output-image quality icon is displayed in a screen area different from that of the setting item.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-67235 describes a method of displaying a finished screen on a display panel, obtaining positional information in response to a touch-panel input, displaying a character menu including available process items with reference to a correlation table obtained from the positional information, and setting the process items.
As described above, for setting the output of image information, methods of displaying a set menu and selecting a setting item on the set menu have been employed. In those cases, the user must repeat displaying and selecting the setting process items in deeper levels. Moreover, the user may not be able to understand the function of the setting items because the setting menu is expressed in characters and must repeat trial and error. That is to say, there is no direct connection between a user's desired final setting and an actual operation in the course of actual output settings; in other words, it is not intuitive visual operation, which makes the setting operation extremely difficult. Particularly, recent digital MFPs pose significant problems of complicated operation screens and difficult setting operations for setting the output of image processing information.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-87166 Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-67235